Travel Masters Podcast
Founded by travel goddess and CEO of Small World Big Fun, Cindy Minor and sales training expert Morris Sims, The Travel Masters Learning Community (click the link and join us there too) is here to help you grow in the world of travel and achieve greatness!
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Travel Masters Podcast
Crafting Unique Adventures Avoiding the Touristic Rush
Ever wondered what it's like to transition from a corporate career to a life filled with global adventures? Join us on the Travel Masters podcast as we chat with Samantha Green, an inspiring travel professional from England, who took the leap after multiple redundancies and found her passion teaching English in Thailand. Influenced by her fiancé's travel tales, Samantha embarked on a journey that led her to explore various countries before making the charming, coastal Cornwall, UK, her home base. Samantha's story is a testament to the transformative power of travel and the joy of balancing a serene home life with the thrill of worldwide exploration.
In our conversation, we uncover the intricate art of professional travel advising amidst the challenges of over-tourism. Samantha shares her expertise in crafting personalized travel experiences that help clients discover hidden gems and avoid the pitfalls of crowded tourist hubs. By focusing on travelers who value expert guidance and can journey off-peak, she reveals how to create unforgettable adventures while respecting local cultures and environments. From the importance of tailor-made itineraries to ensuring travel advisors' skills are valued, this episode offers a fresh perspective on finding balance and value in today's travel landscape. Tune in to learn how to elevate your travel experiences with the wisdom of an industry insider.
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Welcome to the Travel Masters podcast. We're here to help travel advisors and travel agency owners get what they really want from their business. I'm Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for our podcast. I'm an ex-chemical engineer turned life insurance agent. I got to tell you selling life insurance was a lot more fun for me than being an engineer. After a few years, they asked me to teach other people how to do what I was doing. And well, long story short, we wound up in New York City for 20 years. That was quite a change for a young Alabama boy. I retired after 20 years as the vice president and chief learning officer, where my team and I trained over 12,000 agents and their managers to be independent business owners and sales professionals. Now I'm not one to stop working, so I started my own business and I was blessed to find a sweet spot with travel professionals that I was able to help. Now I've got several travel agency consulting clients and I'm the co-founder of the Travel Masters Learning Community, where we provide opportunities for travel professionals to become more effective, efficient and to get what they want from their business.
Speaker 1:On this podcast, I'm going to be interviewing guests that I believe are going to have a message that can be of help to you. Our travel professional community and I'll do some solo episodes as well with some other stuff that I really think can help you in your business. So, with all that said, hey, let's get this party started with today's episode. What do you say?
Speaker 1:You know, one of the most exciting things about the travel industry is that it's not restricted to any particular place or any particular part of the universe or part of my universe, I guess. Part of the world that we live in, they're travel advisors that do the same kind of work that we do here in the United States. All over the world that we live in, they're travel advisors that do the same kind of work that we do here in the United States, all over the world. And today Samantha Green is with us all the way from England and we're just really excited about having her here. And I'll let you know that it is not the middle of the night where Samantha is, since it's only 1230 here in Texas. It's only about 630 in the UK. Samantha, thank you so much for being with us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me on your podcast. It's really exciting to be here and, yes, it's 30 pm, so not the middle of the night.
Speaker 1:Good, I have done podcasts with people from Thailand and that part of the world and it's, like you know, two o'clock in the morning or something over there and it's. I can't imagine what I'm doing to them when I ask them to join us for that. So, Samantha, thank you for being here. Tell us a little bit about how you got involved in the travel industry and what you do today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, my background is actually training and development, which I worked in for a long time and, after the third time, have been made redundant because I worked for big corporations and they tend to merge and and then your job's superfluous and things like that. So, yeah, third time of working corporate companies and getting made redundant, I decided I didn't really want to go into that anymore. Um, and then just happened to meet my partner my fiance now, but I met him in 2012. And he'd just come back from traveling and teaching abroad and I thought, oh, that sounds quite interesting. I think I might quite fancy that. And so, yeah, I put my house up for rent and just disappeared off to the east. I haven't got a problem with the west, but we decided to to go east, yeah, and yeah ended up India and and Thailand and all sorts of places, and.
Speaker 2:But it was kind of during that little trip and and I, I was teaching English in Thailand and we were exploring all over. It was amazing and I kind of got a little bit of a bug, as, as you do, and uh, we talked about what we're going to do when we get back. We hadn't got jobs to go to. Uh, and and, um, I actually at the time lived right in the middle of of the UK and, um, it's the furthest point you can get from the ocean and it kind of when you've been traveling and you always not always, but you're travelling to coastlines and different oceans, different seas to be stuck in the middle of the country was something I didn't really want to go back to do. So we said, well, the UK is our oyster, kind of speak. And yeah, where do we want to go?
Speaker 2:And so we chose the county that has the most coastline, which is Cornwall, down in the southwest, the bit that sticks out. And we actually worked it out. We've just come back from Portugal, actually, and we met a couple from Canada and we were chatting and they said, if, kind of, as the crow flies, from where you are, what do you where'd you hit? And, uh, newfoundland was the answer. So if we've actually taken as the crow flies, we would end up there. So we, we kind of had this conversation about how, um, how interesting it is to see where, where people come from, and I think when you travel, meeting people and things is one of the great things. But so we were saying that that's such a good place to be based in the UK because it offers travel to other places, but you've got somewhere nice to come back to as well, so that we decided we would make that our base.
Speaker 2:So, we've got. I mean we can walk to the, we can walk to the ocean in 20 minutes. Oh, that's nice. You know, we know we've got lots of really nice beaches, lots of nice countryside, yeah, and I think that's kind of where we were at, what we're going to do when we go back, and it took a couple of years, but we decided that actually we want to still travel. What can we do while we're traveling? And it kind of made sense to actually get into the travel business. I'm with a company called Not Just Travel. It's a franchise. Um, I'm with a company called not just travel uh, it's a franchise. It's. It's kind of a um part of a bigger company, an independent um part of a bigger company, and and what's nice about that is we've got a big team of people. Um, we've got really really good relationships with suppliers and different groups and tour operators. So we get a lot of support and if I don't know answer to a question that that that my customers have, then someone else will know.
Speaker 2:We've got a lot to go yeah yeah, there's lots of people that are on the ground and everything so. So the only unfortunate thing about um setting up my travel business so it was that it was about eight days before the whole world locked down in 2020, so it probably wasn't great timing yeah, it wasn't wasn't the best timing, but, um, but it gave me time to kind of sit back and reflect and and decide what kind of travel person I wanted to be. What was my focus going to be? Rather than just being a general. Now I can do anything, even though I can and what is your focus, amanda?
Speaker 1:where did you take that?
Speaker 2:yeah, and I've kind of divided it up into what the kind of people that I want to deal with. So my ideal, um, who tends to be someone like myself, a little bit older, um, um, and the kind of older end of the scale. So so not really um, young people, um, backpacking and things like that. Um, I'm looking after the, the older clients and the people that probably want to have an experience that they haven't had. Um, because travel's changing all the time and and you know you can do so much more now than perhaps people that were traveled when they were 20. They might be, they might be 70 now, and I think about what my mom's type of holidays, to what she could do now. And you know it's a world apart.
Speaker 2:And it was funny because my, my phone rang when I was just thinking about what we, what we were going to talk about, just thinking about what we were going to talk about, and my ringtone is a song called Barbados I don't know if you know it, whether it's just a UK song, I'm not sure by a band called Typically Tropical. It came out in 1975, and it's my ringtone and it just really takes me back to that time when to me at a very young age, barbados was somewhere where I would never go, and even thought of getting on a plane for me at that age was I doubt whether that will ever happen and how things have changed. We used to go on holiday in a caravan in Wales and here down in Cornwall and that was really exciting, but to think about going to some tropical beach was just so. It just seemed so far away. And now I'm thinking how small the world feels now and how how easy it is for people to travel. And I think sometimes that's actually the problem, because when we are trying to be travel advisors, travel consultants, we're trying to give people this amazing experience and taking food for example, they can travel to all these places to get this wonderful food, but you can get it anywhere. They say that yesterday. I came back from Portugal yesterday and while I was there, we ate portuguese food. We also ate indian food, um korean food, um nepalese food, italian food, you know, and it's like you can do that anywhere. So what do people? What do people? I think that this is what I'm kind of getting at now is what type of travel do I want to sell to those older people and what do I want them to experience? And I think it's about that experience.
Speaker 2:Another thing I was thinking about is when we go on holiday and you go somewhere say you go to India the obvious thing is to do right, I want to go to the Taj Mahal and I want to kind of see it. You take some pictures and then you might, yeah, and then you might want to go to Machu Picchu or the Wall of China or Great Barrier Reef, some things like that. But what is it you actually want to do when you get there? Because having an experience is different from taking a photograph of something memorable. So I was reading an article not long ago about the realities of going to see the Mona Lisa and kind of the expectation is that you can get right up to it, you take your pictures and have your photo taken with it. The reality is you've got about 300 people in front of you and you're lucky if you can get a tiny snap that there's about that big. Oh my, and is that the kind of experience people want?
Speaker 2:People are flocking to all these big, big, well-known monuments and things, and what happens? You take a picture with your phone. You maybe post it on instagram or facebook, um, and then you probably won't do anything with it then ever, because nowadays you can. You can see a picture of the mona lisa online. So what is it about the experience of actually going to these places that you want to take away in 10 years time or or anytime you see a picture of a mona lisa on the screen or on the tv? What do you want that to do?
Speaker 2:But what memories you want to bring back? And I think that's important because, um, I go to places that I I went with my grandma, who's not, who's no longer with us, and that's what I remember about playing hooker duck. I don't know if you have that in Texas, where you have rubber ducks with hooks on and you get this thing. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when you get your duck, it's got a number on the bottom and they say you never win the big prizes, it's always some little, but we love playing that and things like that.
Speaker 2:A part of the experience of going it. We went to wales, it's. It's not that far. It takes about two hours to get there, um, but the memories I've got of that and and to be fair, not much of it is is I have access to photographs because we it was when we printed them out. You know you. You sent your film away and got it printed and brought it back, so it wasn't instant. And somewhere, I think maybe in the attic I've got some photographs, but I don't really need them because it's kind of in here, because it's more about the memories of what it was.
Speaker 1:Well, you said it. You said it. That's kind of yeah, it's experience. That's what we're trying to do is help people have the very best experience they've ever had, wherever they're going and whatever they're doing. You mentioned a couple of things earlier, though, that I think are just vitally important.
Speaker 1:That you did you actually created or you found a niche, a niche. A niche, however, we want to pronounce it of the traveler that you wanted to do business with, and you identified that traveler, and that's now your ideal, if you will. Your ideal traveler meets these particular characteristics, but there's something else that comes. When you do that, when you niche down and you determine who your ideal traveler is, you also, pretty well, are gonna gonna choose a niche and an ideal traveler that that's gonna be a qualified traveler, somebody that will do business with you, and, therefore, things that stand out, that make someone, in my opinion, a qualified traveler, and the first one is they can afford to go, they can afford to pay to go travel.
Speaker 1:So many people you know and I'm sure you've experienced this they want to call me, they want to go to Hawaii, and and then, when you start talking about numbers, they're going. Well, we've got $2,000 and you're thinking, that won't get you very far off the coast of England, much less to Hawaii. So they've got the ability to pay. They also have the understanding that you're a professional and they're willing to and wanting your advice and they want to work with you. That is, I think, one of the most important things and you can approach them on a favorable basis.
Speaker 1:That just simply means you can have a conversation and be happy with each other and, finally, they're not a pain in the neck, you know. I mean, we professional travel advisors and I'm not one, but we as a group here we deserve to be respected for our professional knowledge and capabilities and capacity. And if the person is not going to treat you with respect, you don't have time to deal with them. And I think you've done a great job of niching down and determining who your ideal traveler is, because chances are that if you are older and I'm 68, I guess I fall into that category they tend to have the money to travel if they want to travel. So you've got that going for you and we older folks tend to believe that other people can bring us advice and information when we need it. So I think you've done a great job there, by niching down and identifying your ideal traveler.
Speaker 2:Yeah, plus, they can be more flexible, can't they? So they're not traveling in peak times, so you can. You can. Actually a lot of places you visit off season are better places because you don't get the crowds and you can experience it and and have a little bit more attention on you rather than being one of a one of a crowd.
Speaker 2:Um, reading um yesterday about it's classed as one of the top beaches in the world and I'm not going to try and pronounce it. It's in greece. It's an island in greece. I'm not going to try and pronounce it and apparently it's. It's. It's one of the best places to ever go. Well, it used to be, because it is pink sand, beautiful, clear waters. It was just amazing. You can imagine when the people used to go there and they would just stand there and it would be deserted and it would just be so beautiful. Now it has car parks, it has buses pulling up, they've put shops and bars on there. Pink sand has gone because the tourists keep taking it home with them. Presumably it's made out of. It's probably pink because it's. It has, like crab, shells and stuff in, but of course it's probably there is a native turtle loggerhead.
Speaker 2:I think it might be a loggerhead turtle that's kind of disappearing because of the pollution and the crowd and everything, so it's quite sad in a way that you know, and again, with social media, it's kind of like the top 10 secret reaches in the world.
Speaker 2:not so secret anymore, because everyone, you're telling everyone about it, um, and and you can see this, this happening a lot and and I think people are getting fed up. They don't want to, they're hearing about over tourism, they don't want to be part of the problem, they want to, to do something different, and you know that's where we can help, because there's got to be, I would say, over 60 of holidays that are available and not online. Do you know that? You know people can't access them like the trade. Can you know? We've got? We've got got people that we work with in the trade that are amazing and they find these beautiful boutique hotels that are run by families and they put together these amazing itineraries that are off the beaten track. And I think that's kind of where we as professional advisors are going.
Speaker 2:Again today, reading in the Travel Trade Gazette that we have of a I think it's an agency I don't know how big the agency is and the lady that owns it has just said we're not even going to start entertaining package holidays anymore because they're off the shelf.
Speaker 2:People can do it themselves. Not that they won't do it and not that I wouldn't ever do it, because if it's a friend or someone that I know, it's just for them. I can give them that little bit of extra security knowing that if they have a late flight that lands at nine o'clock at night, the bricks and mortar shops are not going to be open. They're not going to be able to get hold of anyone, but they can get hold of me. So it's that look, if I do the booking, I'll do everything for you. It doesn't necessarily cost any more. It might do, I don't know. We don't tend to charge any fees in the UK. We tend to do everything for free, so we are kind of. You know we need to make sure that we're not being taken advantage of, but sometimes it's just nice to just with your friends and family just to say, look, book it through me, it won't cost you any more.
Speaker 2:And then but you've got me on your side, yeah, but with tailor made travel, with, actually, things that people can't book themselves or very complicated and would take a lot of time and wouldn't be protected, then I think we deserve our weight in gold really for that of our weight in gold, really for that. Oh yeah, you know, and we are finding things that are just a little bit different and a little bit more, um, of what people want. People. People get fed up.
Speaker 2:I mean, you hear of people that that again, the older people that I think we're a bit nervous about going to different places, so they, yeah, we'll have two weeks in torremolinos in spain, because we know it, we know all the bars to go to, we know the restaurants to go to, we know the hotel owner, which is great, because then they're not wasting their money, they know what they're getting. But also it just restricts that, um, the experiences that they can have, because I think they're just scared to go somewhere else in case it's not as nice as where they know. And we've got to help them with that. We've got to say, look, this is what you like, and I know that you don't like this. Like, have you thought about this place.
Speaker 1:We can actually sit down and talk to people, yeah because, because so many times they don't know what's available, they have no idea what they could get, and that's where where we come in and do such great things. Samantha, thank you so much for joining us today and taking your time to share your thoughts.
Speaker 2:It's okay. I've really enjoyed it. It's been fun, it really has.
Speaker 1:Well, we appreciate you taking your time and joining us all the way from England to talk about travel at Travel Masters, and this is the Travel Masters podcast. So, have a great day and thank you so very much For everybody else out there. Hey, go meet somebody that you haven't talked to yet about travel and about your business, because your business is what's important and they want to know about it. When you do open up and share with them the things that you can do that nobody else can do for them, you can do it. Have a great week and again, Samantha, thank you very much. Have a great day, everybody. We'll see you again next time on the Travel Masters Podcast. I'm Morris Sims.